Lance,
I apologize. I was responding to your comment that the low vault scoring was important because it was interfering with your daughter's goal of a 38 at every meet. My comment was following the previous poster that she may need to adjust expectations (due to the lower scoring). I noticed at a very large meet this weekend (over 2,300 competitors) the highest L7 score was a 37.4. I did not intend malice and I did not, nor would I tell a child to adjust their dreams. It is because your daughter has dreams that I don't want the short term goals to discourage her. You are right though, you did not ask and you can obviously feel free to ignore my advice.
On a forum like this, we all post and contribute based on our experiences and perceptions of the world, we can agree, disagree, ignore.... My post was not intended as an attack and I apologize that it came off that way.
My post was coming from my own experience, having a daughter who is now retired from the sport after multiple years of competing at L10 and now in college. She set many goals over her 10 years of competing- some of them in her control, some of them out of her control, some met and some never achieved. She recently shared with me that she never felt like she was 'a good gymnast' (despite winning AA a state her final year). That made me sad. She always set self imposed high goals, that's just who she is. In addition, in my job, I literally have to set SMART goals with pre-teens/teens every day, so it is second nature for me to do that- (so yeah, when you say who am I to tell a kid to adjust their goals- that is actually my job to help kids focus on making goals that they have control over and are achievable) but at the same time I realize it is not my job here
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As far as setting score goals, I get that some gymnasts find that a helpful way to measure their success and they link it to all the things that have to happen to get there- my daughter included had goals for scores she wanted to hit each season. The part that concerned me, was the goal for EVERY meet- and again that was just a hot button for me because of how gymnastics is this whole measure of perfection without room for error...I am still in the process of processing my daughter's gymnastics experience with her as she is recently retired- and this is something we have talked about a lot. I fear that the feeling 'not good enough' may be rampant in this sport. (Take a look at Shawn Johnson's I am Second short film) So yes, I acknowledge I may have read more into your situation- simply based on where I am at on processing this whole gymnastics journey of the past 10 years.
I do wish you and your daughter the best and I hope she realizes all her dreams.
